Year-on-year increase in DMCA take down requests, but is anything being done about this? DMN takes a look…
Google have experienced a year-on-year increase in the number of DMCA takedown requests. But over the past two years there has been a major incline – DMCA takedown requests have quadrupled.
In 2014, Google reportedly processed a massive 345 million pirate-linking takedown requests. But if you think that’s bad, 2015 was worse, with the number of takedown requests recorded at 560 million, a 60% increase in just one year. In November of last year, it was also reported that the search engine received more than 2 million takedown requests in one day, which equates to 1,500 infringement requests a minute.
The fact that Google received over half a billion take down requests in just one year is a strong and convincing indicator that there isn’t enough being done to prevent pirate sites from popping up in Google search. Or, at the very least, preventing them from reoccurring.
Music artists and rights holders have been growing more and more concerned as music industry revenues have been declining year-on-year, as a result of the sheer volume of infringing content online that is not being monitored effectively.
But, what is being done about this rising issue?
1. Artists have been appealing to congress and US Copyright Office.
Back in April, 400 artists, songwriters, music managers, and organisations collectively demanded DMCA reforms by petitioning to the US Copyright Office. Also, some artists, like Nikki Sixx for example took the protest a step further by writing an open letter to Google founder, Larry Page demanding change.
The latest artists battling for DMCA reforms released an open letter today (June 20th) addresses to congress, appealing for urgent changes.
2. US Copyright Office have been discussing the effective of DMCA safe harbors.
Throughout both roundtables, there were discussions regarding the effectiveness of the DMCA. A participant of the roundtables shared some exclusive information with DMN, and the conclusions were as follows:
- From a copyright owners standpoint the system is rigged.
- Section 512 of the DMCA is outdated and ineffective.
- The system requires proactive policing of the Internet from the likes of Google.
- Strong DMCA abuse.
- No responsibility is taken.
- Copyright owners biggest frustration is with the whack-a-mole problem.
These are the conclusions, but what is being done about this is still unknown as their have been no reports of a reform. On top of these roundtables, The US Copyright Office also launched a public consultation at the end of last year.
3. Google makes changes to search algorithm.
Google has taken some steps to address the issue by implementing changes to its search algorithm to lower the ranking of sites that receive copyright infringing notices. But, there are still several large-scale torrent sites among the top search results.
The post Google’s DMCA Takedown Notices Quadruple In Just Two Years appeared first on Digital Music News.